Batman Incorporated #2 Annotations
BATMAN INCORPORATED #2
Resurrector!
DC Comics, February 2011, Color, 32pgs, $3.99
Written by GRANT MORRISON ; Art by YANICK PAQUETTE; Cover by J.H. WILLIAMS III; 1:25 Variant cover by YANICK PAQUETTE
The dynamic new era of Batman continues! The Dark Knight and Mr. Unknown – the Batman of Japan – go up against Lord Death Man. It’s going to be a fight to the end that could see the failure of Batman, Inc. before it’s even begun!
Commentary
A much more action-orientated issue than last time, Batman Incoporated #2 continues the story of Jiro Osamu becoming the Batman of Japan. Unlike every issue of Batman Incorporated that's been released since, #2 actually shipped on time, though not with a Andy Kubert variant cover as originally solicited. Paquette, like so many of Morrison's collaborators on his Batman run, continues to raise his game and absolutley knocks it out of the park this issue.
Annotations
Cover - The Japanese text on Paquette's variant translates as 'Batman' on the left (taken from the logo of Chip Kidd's Bat-Manga! book) and 'Unknown' on the right.
The kanji characters on J.H. Williams' variant are probably straight out of Google Translate (i.e. not really very serviceable actual Japanese). The uppermost of the two (杳) is a rarely used character meaning 'Darkness', and the bottom character (死) means 'Death' (massive thank you to @Cormacaroni for the translation).
Page 1 - A canny recap page, throwing us straight back into the action and telling us everything we need to know about what's come before without actually repeating anything from last issue. Batman and some Japanese guy are fighting soom goons in skeleton suits while Catwoman and a girl are trapped in the apartment below with a giant octopus. Right then, let's get on with it...
Page 2-3 - Another fantastic double page splash by Paquette. The only way he could top this is by having Gaucho punch somebody in the face with the front wheel of his motorcycle. That one's coming up in the next issue you say? Sold.
Page 4-5 - You think Batman and Catwoman are even a little bit phased by fighting a giant octopus in a Japanese apartment block? Nah, me neither.
Page 6 - That first panel with the seagulls and the octopus corpse? Pure gold.
Poor Jiro's Peter Parker-isms continue. His girlfriend isn't happy to be saved, she's real mad! ...And I have a science assignment due in tomorrow!
Page 7 - The flashback to Batman and Robin facing Death Man back in Gotham is Paquette's recreation of the cover of 1966's Batman #180.
Page 8 - More shades of Adam West as Batman makes outrageous leaps in logic to solve Lord Death Man's 'elemental murders' riddle. If the "three unknown men, buried alive" were a clue pointing to Mr. Unknown's murder ('earth' > underground?), and the Aqua Regia points to the Atlantean Crown Jewels and Shiny Happy Aquazon, what the hell kind of a clue is driving a supercar off of the top of a moving train while emptying a tommy gun into a crowded public place? If, like Jiro says, Lord Death Man is working through the Japanese super-hero population, who was the next target?
Odaiba is an artificial island in Tokyo Bay and home to the real-life Museum of Maritime Science.
Page 9 - The justification for leaving the Mr Unknown identity behind at the end of the issue and taking on the mantle of the Batman of Japan; Jiro was an understudy, a sidekick, and like Dick Grayson becoming Nightwing, he needs to step out from the shadow of his mentor, even if that means stepping into the shadow of another.
Page 10 - Lord Death Man 's yogic techniques have moved way beyond returning from apparent death; he can also heal gunshot wounds in a matter of hours.
Page 11 - "Put that on a t-shirt!" Lord Death Man, Emo posterboy. He's extracting a bullet from his own chest in the last two panels.
Page 12 - More blackly comic videogame ultraviolence as Lord Death Man blows up a bus full of disabled kids and a hospital before climbing into his pimped-out street racer and ripping up the streets of Tokyo, sloganeering all the way.
Page 13 - Batman hitches a ride on a passing helicopter. With a grappling hook. Like in his JLA run, Morrison's sheer infectious joy in boys-own superheroics really moves to the foreground in this series.
Shiny Happy Aquazon is a member of the Japanese super-group the Super Young Team, a kind of faux-Japanese Teen Titans. Her dad is Senior Waveman from Big Science Action, a similarly faux-Justice League of America. Both groups debuted in Morrison and JG Jones' Final Crisis.
Page 14 - Mr Unknown suits up. I had an idea that his look was based on the Jet Li film Black Mask, about a Hong Kong martial arts superhero, but looking it up has demonstrated to me that I totally mis-remembered the costume. Oh well. Anyone have any ideas on Mr Unknown's visual inspiration?
Why are the police trying to barge Jiro's door down?
Page 15-16 - Maybe 'fire' as the 'clue' element from this murder. Lord Death Man coming out of the sun, Kamikaze stye, tommy guns blazing. Maybe the next victim was veteran Japanese hero Rising Sun? Maybe I'm trying to hard to answer a tenuous 'riddle'...
Page 18 - There's something you don't see everyday; Batman throwing a burning criminal off the side of a building and on to the asphalt below.
Page 19 - Presumably, Batman and Jiro have met at some point off panel and choreographed Jiro's supposed 'death'. Unlike Lord Death Man though, Jiro's resurrection remakes him into something new, something better.
Page 20 - "... removed to an unknown location by the authorities." That would be Batman and Catwoman conspicuously driving the ambulance that takes him away.
We'll see this Batman Incorporated induction scene again in later issues as Bruce's shadow continues to "stretch across the world".
Page 21 - Lord Death Man is trapped onboard a satellite, "A guest of the Japanese space programme", but at least its got a window. As we'll see in issue six, Leviathan has a satellite too, You think maybe the two of them might run into each other up there?
Abyssopelagic depths are below four thousand metres, or about two and a half miles.
"...pressures above 1000 atmospheres." is a typo, it should be below one thousand atmospheres.
Page 22 - The Batman of Japan!
Jiro is locked in battle with Professor Gorilla, like Lord Death Man another unscrupulous sort from the Bat-Manga! book. Like I said last time, if you don't already own Bat-Manga! you really should. Professor Gorilla ferchrisakes! ..
